The ocean here doesn’t just whisper — it speaks in full sentences. Complex, layered ones that somehow make more sense than most conversations I’ve had in boardrooms this past year.
I’m writing this with sand between my toes and salt air filling my lungs, watching the Indian Ocean stretch endlessly before me. The Maldives have this peculiar magic: they strip away everything unnecessary until you’re left with just water, sky, and whatever thoughts have been hibernating in the corners of your mind all winter.
There’s something profoundly liberating about being 7,000 miles from your last Zoom call. The Wi-Fi here is deliberately patchy — a feature, not a bug — and for the first time in months, my phone isn’t buzzing with “urgent” requests to create content about January detox trends or Valentine’s nail art. The silence is intoxicating.
I’ve been carrying around this notebook for three years now. Leather-bound, pretentious little thing I bought in a London bookshop during my MSc days, thinking I’d fill it with brilliant business insights. Instead, it collected dust while I filled my brain with market penetration strategies and consumer behavior analytics. Useful stuff, sure, but not exactly soul-stirring.
Tonight, under a sky that looks like someone spilled diamonds across black velvet, I finally opened it.
The waves here follow no algorithm. They don’t perform for likes or optimize for engagement. They simply exist, crash, retreat, repeat. There’s something deeply honest about that rhythm — it’s become the soundtrack to thoughts I’d been too busy to think.
I’ve been sketching stories in the margins. Not business plans or brand strategies, but actual stories. About the woman I met at Heathrow whose Hermès bag couldn’t hide the exhaustion in her eyes. About the marketing executive who confessed during a manicure that she’d rather be painting watercolors than analyzing conversion rates. About myself, apparently — though I’m still figuring out what that story might be.
Here’s what nobody tells you about creative dreams: they don’t announce themselves with fanfare. They slip in quietly, usually when you’re distracted by something as simple as wave patterns or the way afternoon light catches on water. One moment you’re thinking about quarterly projections, the next you’re wondering what would happen if you actually wrote down all those half-formed narratives floating around your head.
The ocean breeze here has this peculiar effect — it doesn’t just cool your skin, it somehow ventilates your thoughts. Clears out the mental clutter of deadlines and expectations and leaves space for something… different. More honest, maybe. Less polished.
I’ve always been good at reading people, at seeing the stories behind their carefully curated surfaces. It’s served me well in business, made me a better nail artist, helped me navigate the complex ecosystem of brands and influencers. But I’ve never considered that this skill might translate into something more personal, more creative.
As I sit here watching the sun melt into the horizon like expensive lipstick on warm skin, I’m struck by how much stories matter. Not the ones we tell ourselves about productivity and success, but the real ones — the messy, complicated, unfiltered ones that live in the spaces between what we project and who we actually are.
Maybe it’s the isolation talking, or the way this place exists outside normal time zones and social media schedules. But I’m starting to think there might be room in my life for both — the strategic, analytical mind that builds brands and the curious observer who collects human moments like sea glass.
The notebook isn’t empty anymore. Just a few pages, nothing revolutionary. But it’s a start.
Next week I fly back to reality — to client calls and color consultations and the beautiful chaos of life. But I’m taking something with me that wasn’t in my luggage when I arrived: permission. Permission to pay attention to the stories that surface when you’re not actively looking for them. Permission to write them down, even if they never become anything more than private excavations of experience.
The waves keep their steady rhythm as I write this, indifferent to deadlines and brand strategies and five-year plans. They just exist, moment by moment, honest and unhurried.
Maybe that’s the real lesson of islands — they teach you that some things can’t be optimized or strategized into existence. Sometimes you just have to let them wash over you and see what surfaces when the tide goes out.
Posted from somewhere between latitude and longitude, where stories grow wild like coral.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
